


A Lover's Token

by thestarsjustblinkforus



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, M/M, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-11
Updated: 2013-12-11
Packaged: 2018-01-04 08:13:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1078651
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thestarsjustblinkforus/pseuds/thestarsjustblinkforus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Grantaire used to be a dreamer. He will allow himself now to dream this.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>A pretend commission.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>A small thing. A secret thing.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>A counterfeit of a token given by clandestine lovers to each other, a secret affixed to a breast over the heart, and Enjolras will never know even if he sees it whose lovely blue eye it is…</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Lover's Token

**Author's Note:**

> Based on [this](http://thestarsjustblinkforus.tumblr.com/post/69177911178/in-the-18th-and-19th-centuries-wealthy-british).

It is a small thing. A secret thing.

He will paint it with the tiniest most delicate of brushes he can find fished out from the cabinet he had put his foot through in a fit of despair over a year ago. He has not touched the contents since and those brushes he once kept so painstakingly clean still lie like sticks in the dust amidst slivers of wood, the jar he had kept them in shattered, their shards winking provocatively in the candlelight as he finally pulls open what is left of the splintered door.

He has been tempted several times over these past few months to tidy the mess, to perhaps try again, but there is a sweetness in denying himself, a comfortable ache of want never satisfied that he has grown accustomed to, has come to greet like an old friend  _(Ah yes, hello again, none for me thank you, never for me, no)_. And besides. He does not try to take solace in paint anymore. Does not allow what he attempted to do with it and always failed at to hurt him anymore. There are plenty of things that do that already and he has decided to no longer court them.

With the exception of  _one_.

The one who made him  _want_  to paint again. The one who made him dream in vivid color when all else had long since dissolved into muted grays and faded roses... He dreams in  _his_  colors now, colors that make his fingers twitch with longing for those brushes, for pigments in bottles like fairy dust, like ingredients for magic... From the very first moment he saw him on the street and followed him into the cafe, his hands have pulsed like stars for want of tools to capture him. And yet he would not take them up. He would gaze upon him intently, gently imagining the how and the where. He would spread him over the blank whiteness of his mind, luxuriant, pliant in ways he would never be in life, and then fierce and glowing as well, something truer to his true self. Serious and lovely, determined and bristling at what he calls injustice and what Grantaire calls human nature. 

He would go home alone and untuck a bottle from under his arm and stare down at the ruined cabinet that housed a multitude of potentials for failure and he could not do it. He could not bear to disgrace him in that way as well, and so he would choose the bottle again and again night after night until his hands would be too loose to hold anything at all let alone a slender brush meant for precision, delicacy…

But something is coming. The  _time_  is coming fast like a wave rushing towards the shore and Enjolras is standing before it, arms flung wide to meet the crest, and he will be there on the sand with him, with all of them, but he does not wish to drown alone.

He has nothing but his words ringing in his ears, words that have pumped the blood back into his heart and made him feel  _alive_  again, a feeling he still continues to temper with drink and smoke because he has learned better than to travel through life without armor… But Enjolras… Enjolras has found the chinks, the weakness in the joints where pieces have become rusted and flaked away. He does not know he has, does not know that all that he is has crept under Grantaire's skin and deep into his bones and that it animates him when he would be still until he crumbled to dust, and so he… He wants something of Enjolras to take with that is concrete. A talisman if need be to ward off his innate cowardice for when the wave hits. A token for himself that he would have Enjolras give even as he knows he never would or perhaps could... 

But Grantaire used to be a dreamer. He will allow himself now to dream this.

A pretend commission.

A small thing. A secret thing.

A counterfeit of a token given by clandestine lovers to each other, a secret affixed to a breast over the heart, and Enjolras will never know even if he sees it whose lovely blue eye it is.

But others might so he will wear it under his waistcoat.

He blows at the dust covering his supplies and it erupts in a cloud that unfurls from the recesses of the cabinet making him cough until he wheezes but he picks through the glass all the same until he finds what he needs.

He pulls out the box of watercolors undamaged by his tantrum and spares a brief pitying glance at his paintbox of which he cannot say the same.

He cleans the dust and dirt and glass from his brushes carefully, reverently, with fresh water cradled in a wine glass.

He finds a small scrap of paper thick and soft enough to take the color well and he dips the end of the finest of the brushes on his tongue, mingling himself with the watercolor, before setting to his work more lovingly than he has ever set himself to anything.

When he finishes he lays it to dry by the open window and turns to rummage through the box kept under his bed, a box full of letters never read and heirlooms he keeps only until the money the last one brought has dried up. He finds what he is looking for quickly as the supply has dwindled to only a handful of silly trinkets. It had belonged to his father, something he had passed on to him in a rare moment of tenderness between them, and he ruthlessly pries the jewel free from its setting.

He carefully cuts the watercolor to size and gently, oh so gently, places it into the empty heart of his father’s broach.

A single piercing blue eye below a swath of honey colored brow looks up at him and he chuckles to himself at the setting which he had chosen for size and not design.

Enjolras would not find it amusing in the least, which he has to admit delights him. He cannot resist a poke whenever there is an opportunity for it even with him. Perhaps more so with him.

He affixes it to the inside of his waistcoat hanging limply over the back of his chair and he lies down on his small misshapen bed suddenly overwhelmed with exhaustion. It is a silly thing he has done. He hardly knows why he has, why he should choose something so explicitly intimate when there is no intimacy between them. He could have stolen the black silk ribbon he ties his hair back with. It is forever coming loose. More than thrice in an evening alone Courfeyrac or Combeferre might retrieve it for him from under a table or the back of a chair. He could have easily taken it, wound it around his wrist and hidden it beneath the cuff of his sleeve and pretended he was a knight wearing his lady's colors...

But Enjolras is the knight, not he, and though his features be lovelier than any woman's Grantaire has ever seen or admired, he is most assuredly more of a man than he as well.

And yet in his dreams...  his dreams  _bursting_  with blood reds and sky blues, milky whites and burning golds, he loves him as he might a woman. He imagines him in his bed, the cradle of his thighs fallen open and welcoming, a place for him to come to rest and he wakes with a streak of shame spilled across his belly. 

He has never touched another man so. Has never desired to, but in his head he makes love to him face to face, his hand upon him, stroking him as he might himself, while words tumble from his sweet red mouth, a river of theories and complaints, remedies and castigations, questions and answers and never ever his name tumbling over their skin and to the floor where they become an ocean of letters rocking with them, the bed a boat to sail them away on.

Grantaire has no right to think of him thus. He has no right to play out a fantasy with a lover's token that implies consent, that implies  _acceptance_. He tells himself he should burn it with the last of his candle in the wash basin right now, reset the jewel and take it to the pawn shop.

Instead he falls asleep and dreams of Enjolras finding the thing on him by gripping at him in a way he never would and wondering at the hard lump in his fist beneath the fabric. It pricks him and Grantaire tells him he will happily wear his blood as well as his image.

In his dream Enjolras asks for his in return and Grantaire obliges, taking care to do it well even though it is of him because it is  _for_  him.

And when he pins it to his breast he pricks himself as well leaving his own blood on the white crisp shirt, droplets like petals, like small unhappy promises of what is surely to come…

He awakens hours later to the sound of rain. He lies in bed a moment longer before deciding he is most likely finished with sleeping for the foreseeable future and dresses in the early morning light that reminds him of the dirty paint water still in his glass.

He considers drinking it to wash away the muck in his mouth but decides brandy would do better and so he sets off with a hand pressed over his breast, imprinting the secret to his heart as he disappears into the early morning mist telling himself he will destroy it when he returns, knowing he will not.


End file.
